No Saints or Angels

about my late husband; in the dream he is alive and in love with me; he holds me in his arms and assures me that he'd die without me, he loves me so much. In the dream, I'm happy to hear him say it, although I wake up feeling wretched. I'm even visited by the grandmother that I only know from photos, the one who was gassed: she is amazed that I don't recognize her. 'Just imagine,' she says, 'they took pity on me and let me come back again.'

Back again means back to life. I can understand that.

But the little messenger never lets anyone come back to life.

And where am I, in fact?

I've aged five years in the past six months.

I'm intolerant and don't like myself. I started snapping at Eva in the surgery because I had the feeling she was taking her time every time I needed something from her.

I feel like my ex-husband when he was stricken with a terminal illness. Maybe my soul is being eaten away by a tumour.

Maybe I'm my own illness.

I baked Jana some heart-shaped biscuits; I borrowed the mould from Mum and wrote my daughter a long letter in which I told her I was sure things would be fine between us when she came home. We have to discover together why it's good to be alive.

She called me two days later: 'Hi Mum, it's me.'

'I can tell.'

'How are you?'

'Not bad. And how about you?'

'Thanks for the biscuits, Mum. They took a rise out of me, saying they were better for me than purple hearts. But they were great, and they weren't even slightly burnt. We've already scoffed the lot.'

'I'm glad you liked them.'

'We shared them out. Slávek said you must be great. Most of the people here have parents who couldn't give a damn about them.'

'Thanks for the appreciation. What news do you have for me otherwise?'

'I'm fairly used to it here now, Mum. Sometimes we even have great fun. Really. There's something rather special about looking after a goat, for instance, and drinking its milk, even though it tastes horrible. And Radek said he was pleased with me too and said you could already come on a visit.' She talks a little while more about the merits of life at Sunnyside and then gets alarmed that her call has already cost a lot of money; so she quickly wishes me all the best and asks me again to come and visit her, and to my amazement suggests I bring 'that ginger man' of mine along.

I promise to come and ignore the reference to my ginger man.

I've also had a phone call from the man I had discovered to be my half-brother. He asked me whether he could come and see me; he had something for me. I told him he could and asked if I should drive over for him.

No, he would get here under his own steam. All he needed to know was what floor I live on and whether there is a lift in the building.

'I live on the third floor and there's a lift which works most of the time.'

So he turned up on Saturday afternoon. Some elderly lady brought him; I asked her in but she said she had something to attend to in the meantime.

My brother cruised around the flat as if he'd been doing it for years. 'You've got a nice place,' he said. 'Plenty of room. I like the rubber plant. I can tell you look after it. I expect the drum kit belongs to your girl, doesn't it?' He peeped into Jana's room. 'Where are you hiding her?' he asks.

'She's out of Prague.'

'A pity, I'd like to meet her. After all, she's my niece, isn't she? I don't have any relatives on my mother's side. I haven't met your sister yet either. When it comes down to it, I've never known what it is to have a family. Mum was almost always out and she scarcely said anything when she was home.'

I offered him some wine, but he said he'd sooner have tea with a drop of rum, or preferably a hot toddy.

I went into the kitchen to make the toddy and he followed me in. 'I've brought you something,' he announced. He rummaged in his wheelchair and drew out quite a large object wrapped in paper. 'I painted you a picture,' he explained. 'When you came to see me, I said some stupid things; I'm a bit strange sometimes. But I didn't want you thinking I'm like that all the time. Aren't you going to open it?'

The painting is a portrait of me; I can't tell what sort of a likeness it is; I'm not used to lip-reading my image in the language of colours. What caught my attention most was that in the picture I am surrounded by flames.

'You've committed me to the flames like a witch.'

'No,' he said, 'not at all. Those flames signify passion. You seemed passionate to me — full of energy that could burn up everything around you.'

Good gracious, I thought, this weary old woman?

I thanked him for the painting and told him it was interesting. I poured the hot water on the rum and then told him about the aunt who burnt herself to death. After all, she was his aunt too.

Afterwards he talked to me about his youth and how his mother was indomitable and went on loving my father and never lived with anyone else. My half-brother was once in love too. She was a student nurse. Then came his fateful dive. She used to visit him in hospital and afterwards, when he was back home. She stood by him for several years until eventually he told her not to waste her life.

My half-brother told me in a faltering voice the story of his accident, no doubt for the hundredth time: all about the single dive that changed his life for ever. Then he asked me if I had some photos of his father; his mother had just one, and it had been taken forty years ago.

I took out the box of photographs and selected some with Dad

on them, both alone and with us. Dad as a young man and in old age; Dad in a blue shirt and red scarf wielding a pickaxe on some socialist labour brigade; Dad at the rostrum; Dad at some celebration where the Comrade President pinned on him a medal for services to the Communists' betrayal; Dad just before his death.

I gazed at him, Dad's unacknowledged son, as he examined these static faces and I waited for some movement from his thin, severe lips. But my brother said nothing and returned me the final photo.

'So that's what he looked like,' I said. 'You needn't regret not knowing him. Life with him wasn't easy.'

'I can well imagine.'

'He left his mark on all of us. And lots of others too. You're not the only one he wronged.'

My brother finished his toddy and nodded. 'He hurt my mother most of all. But that's the way it goes: people hurt each other; that's something I discovered. It's a sort of chain reaction. You hurt me, so I'll hurt you back,' he said, sharing his personal philosophy with me. 'The people who don't are the ones who get hurt most.'

I recalled how he'd tried to hurt me, but since the day I visited him he hadn't sent me any threatening letters. It's easiest to hurt those we've never seen, although we most often hurt those who are nearest to us. But it isn't a chain reaction of tit for tat, simply the result of our selfishness, an expression of our bewilderment in the face of life.

The lady who brought my brother rang the downstairs bell. She refused to come up and asked me to wheel my brother into the lift; she'd be waiting for him downstairs.

I thanked him once more for the painting and for paying me a visit. When I opened the lift door for him, I leaned over and kissed him on the lips. His breath smelled of rum, but even so it reminded me of Dad's, although I couldn't recall when my father last kissed me.

5

I went back home to Mum's last week. Mum behaved triumphantly although she had no reason to. I hadn't come to eat humble pie, I simply had nowhere else to live. I had moved a few of my things to Jirka's and slept there for almost a month, but I knew it was no solution. I had hoped against hope that Kristýna would forgive me and I would move into her place, but when I saw how hesitant she was, I realized that that was no solution either. And I don't earn enough to rent a flat of my own.